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Date:      30 Dec 2001 22:22:39 -0500
From:      Joe Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com>
To:        sobomax@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        gnome@FreeBSD.ORG, ports@FreeBSD.ORG, ade@FreeBSD.ORG, proclus@iname.com
Subject:   Re: GNOME on BSD: the past and the future
Message-ID:  <1009768959.65124.4.camel@shumai.marcuscom.com>
In-Reply-To: <1009754271.254.14.camel@notebook>
References:  <1009754271.254.14.camel@notebook>

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On Sun, 2001-12-30 at 18:18, Maxim Sobolev wrote:
> [CC'ed to ports@FreeBSD.org for better reach]
> 
> Dear friends,
> 
> As usual, the very end of the year is a good time to summarize things
> that happened during the past year as well as set targets for the next
> year.
> 
> The past year was undoubtedly the very successful time for the GNOME
> development in general of for FreeBSD porting effort. Several "killer
> apps" and core components either reached their 1.0 release, or are close
> to that point, and what's more important for us is that most of those
> apps are now working on FreeBSD quite stably. Of course this would be
> absolutely impossible without the great help from the FreeBSD GNOME
> community and I would like to use this opportunity to say "thank you" to
> all people who contributed patches, bug reports, suggestions and moral
> support. It was really enjoyable to work with you and I look forward to
> continuing our fruitful co-operation in the year 2002.
> 
> Speaking about the future, there are several ideas that I would like to
> share with you and get your feedback on.
> 
> First of all, it is quite clear that we need to move away from the
> existing "one person" development model, because the size of the GNOME
> ports sub-collection is growing fast, and things are likely to become
> even worse when the GNOME2 platform will start shaping out in the second
> half of the 2002. My vision is that we need a team of at least 2-3
> dedicated developers with the write access to FreeBSD ports repository
> by the mid-2002 and 5-6 at the end of the year. I have a few potential
> candidates on the list and planning to start discussing with each of
> them shortly.

While I don't currently have write access to the source tree, I would be
more than willing to help with the FreeBSD-Gnome effort.  I've been
contributing patches, and have been doing my best to answer Gnome
questions on the lists.

> 
> Another thing that I think would be necessary is the dedicated GNOME
> packages building machine to test and debug the changes on, because
> current bento turn-around times are sub-optimal. If anybody is
> interested and has a machine with good connectivity and some spare CPU
> cycles - please let me know.

I have a few machines I run Gnome on, and keep the builds current.  I
track -stable both at home and at work, and I do my best to make sure
Gnome not only compiles, but runs well on all my machines.  I also test
against XFree 4.x.

While I only have cable modem access at home, I would be happy to lend
my machines for testing.  I have a 733 Intel and a 933 Intel
(Coppermine) with which I do most of my work.

> 
> There are also a number of tasks that are less critical and more
> long-term, but they are also have to be eventually addressed:
> 
> 1. Integration of the FreeBSD-specific changes into the main GNOME
> repository. As the time goes, this becomes more and more important,
> because with each new release the number of local changes and hacks
> increases eating up a valuable time due to necessary to merge old
> changes into the new code. It would be much easier if we have had a
> person with the direct write access into the GNOME cvs repo (another
> long-term goal), but there isn't such person yet, so we need to cope
> with the problem somehow. It would be great is somebody could pick up
> this task, or at least part of it (say only patches for core components
> upon which gnomecore depends - see attached list), identify patches that
> could be integrated and submit them into the GNOME bug tracking system.

It seems to me that this is already happening.  I have seen a number of
patches that make the FreeBSD ports tree get merged into Gnome proper. 
I site most recently the gdm patches, and, while not Gnome itself, the
recent MMX assembly patches for libpng.

However, I agree merging in some of the other portability fixes to apps
like Evolution would be a good thing.

> 
> 2. Creation of the website for the "GNOME on the FreeBSD" FreeBSD
> subproject. For example we have such website for Java subproject
> (http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/). I have some ideas about possible content
> of those pages, so don't hesitate to contact me if you are interested in
> doing that. On a related note, we need some form of FAQ with answers to
> a common FreeBSD-specific questions, because I see people keep asking
> the same ones again and again just wasting their and ours time. I have
> archives of gnome@FreeBSD.org alias since its beginning as well as my
> answers to GNOME-related question sent to ports@FreeBSD.org before the
> alias was created, so what is really necessary here is to do
> compilation. Again, if somebody feels adventurous enough to pick this up
> - please let me know. 

I wouldn't mind compiling some of the questions.  A good deal of Gnome
problems can currently be solved by making sure all the bits are
current.

Joe

> 
> 3. Better co-operation with the same porting efforts on others BSD
> derivatives, most notably NetBSD and GNU/Darwin. Obviously, most of the
> FreeBSD-specific changes in our tree aren't really FreeBSD-specific, but
> instead BSD-specific, so that all parties could benefit from that by
> avoiding duplicate work. From all above, it's most non-obvious task, I
> still do not have a clear vision of how this could be attacked.
> 
> 4. Better dialogue with GNOME developers. Since Ade's (who at that time
> was the member of GNOME Foundation) resignation there was almost no
> relations between FreeBSD and main GNOME developers. Again, I do not
> have a clear vision of how to address this problem, perhaps Ade has some
> better ideas. Ade?
> 
> Ok folks, that's basically all I have to say on the topic - feel free to
> follow-up with your comments, suggestions and feedback. Please note,
> however, that I'll be mostly off-line during the next 2 days, so be more
> patient - I'll answer eventually.
> 
> And last, but not least, I would like to wish to all users and
> developers a happy, prosperous and successful New Year!!
> 
> -Maxim



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